Research on adult family relations has virtually ignored the sources and consequences of intra-family diversity in family relations. The current investigation proposes, via a secondary analysis of an existing data set, to explore a variety of techniques for the assessment of intra-family diversity. The primary objectives are to use a variety of techniques to evaluate the relative utility, and adapt or devise methods which will form the basis for comprehensive studies of substantive aspects of intra-family diversity. The test case for this methodological analysis will be exploration of the importance of family gender composition as a source of intra-family diversity in the quality or dimensions of father-child relations in a secondary analysis of data collected from a sample of fathers. Analytic strategies include a variety of multivariate techniques that are to be constructed or adapted from other uses.